Edward M. Curr and the Tide of History

5. Decline and Fall In Recollections of Squatting in Victoria Edward M. Curr gives only a vague explanation for his leaving Victoria in February 1851, noting that he was ‘desirous of a change’ and wanted to travel through some of the countries ‘about which I had interested myself from boyhood’.1 There seems little doubt, however, that his father’s death three months earlier was a major catalyst in his decision; for a decade he had worked at the behest of his overbearing father, but was now free to pursue his own interests. Before he departed, arrangements were made regarding the runs he and his brothers had inherited. Richard Curr leased the southern squatting runs from his brothers and based himself at the Colbinabbin station. The northern runs (including Tongala) were let to a Mr Hodgson, although it appears that one or more of the younger Curr brothers might have assisted him with station management.2 Meanwhile, Edward, Charles and Walter departed the colony only a few months before the discovery of gold threw the pastoral industry into turmoil. Curr’s younger sister Florence recorded in a memoir that Richard established a home for his mother and younger siblings at Colbinabbin. As the closest station to Melbourne, Colbinabbin had occasionally been a winter residence for the wider Curr family. Richard’s principal challenge was maintaining his labour force, as the station was only 40 miles from the Bendigo goldfields. Eleven-year-old Florence later recalled that she had a marvellous time at Colbinabbin, blissfully unaffected by ‘the troubles of Richard in finding and still more in keeping shepherds’.3 The labour shortage is the principal reason why Richard, in consultation with his mother, decided to sell the squatting runs in 1852. Perhaps Richard also yearned to join his elder brother overseas, which he soon did. In his last will and testament, Edward Curr senior had bequeathed his pastoral leases and livestock to his sons and his city properties to his daughters. Although this might have seemed an equitable distribution in 1850, the subsequent discovery of gold had the dual effect of boosting the value of his daughters’ city properties, while rendering it extremely difficult for his sons to manage the squatting runs following the collapse of the labour market. This effect was compounded by Richard’s decision to sell the pastoral leases.4 In his private family memoir of 1877, Edward M. Curr observed that Richard’s decision to sell 1 Curr 1883: 450. 2 See files for Colbinabbin, Corop, Moira and Tongala, PROV, VA 2878, VPRS 5920 Pastoral Run Files (microfiche). See also Curr, ‘Memoranda Concerning our Family’ (1877), SLV, MS 8998. 3 Florence Curr, ‘Unpublished Memoir’ [undated], Murrumbogie Papers. See also Elizabeth Sarah Pennefather (née Curr), ‘In the Early Day’ (1910), Murrumbogie Papers. 4 Edward Curr’s Last Will and Testament, 14 April 1849, PROV, VPRS 7952/P1, Unit 3, Item A/375. See also Curr, ‘Memoranda Concerning Our Family’ (1877), SLV, MS 8998. 75 Edward M . Curr and the Tide of History the runs had ‘ruined my father’s sons’.5 He neglected to describe the extenuating circumstances of Richard’s decision, simply recording that the stations were sold for £11,000 despite yielding £2,000 per annum. Richard sold the runs to James Murphy and William Looker. Murphy was a successful brewer and wine merchant in Melbourne who was elected to Victoria’s Legislative Council in 1853. In 1857 Murphy sold the southern stations to John Winter, whose wealth grew after the discovery of gold on his property near Ballarat. Winter’s son built a fine Italianate-style brick homestead at Colbinabbin in 1867, to which Curr refers briefly at two points in Recollections of Squatting in Victoria.6 It was men like Murphy and Winter that benefited most from the boom in Victoria that followed the gold rush, not Curr and his brothers who found themselves without property. Curr’s sense of economic loss was intensified by the ever- increasing value of his sisters’ city properties: ‘£30,000 was refused at one time for St Heliers, and £22,000 for a house in Collins St. nearly opposite the Bank of Australasia’.7 Unsurprisingly, Curr did not reveal this financial misfortune inRecollections of Squatting in Victoria. He explained in the last pages of his book that upon his return to Victoria in 1854, ‘I found the squatters – who, during the first fifteen years of the colony, had established a great trade in wool, and built a thriving city – being denounced as monopolists of land and enemies to the public weal.’8 That Curr himself was no longer a squatter, and that the wealth he did acquire in the 1840s was subsequently lost during a drought on the Lachlan River, is hidden from the reader. Ultimately, Recollections of Squatting in Victoria served to establish Curr’s identity as a Victorian pioneer and to assert the social status of a colonial gentleman, which (as a closer analysis reveals) he had later struggled to maintain. All of this future misfortune was unknown to Edward M. Curr when he sailed for England in February 1851 aboard the Stebonheath, accompanied by his brothers Charles and Walter.9 In its voyage across the Pacific theStebonheath ventured unusually far south, encountering strong winds and ‘great numbers of icebergs’; she visited Rio de Janeiro for supplies in early May before reaching Plymouth on 5 July. The ship carried a cargo of 500 casks of tallow, 3,038 bales of wool and 27 passengers, several of whom, according to The Times, had ‘realized handsome competencies in Port Phillip and do not intend returning’.10 The Currs were not so fortunate, their paternal inheritance being somewhat more modest. Under the original terms of his father’s will, Edward M. Curr 5 Curr, ‘Memoranda Concerning Our Family’ (1877), SLV, MS 8998. 6 Curr 1883: 81, 338. 7 Curr, ‘Memoranda Concerning Our Family’ (1877), SLV, MS 8998. 8 Curr 1883: 450–451. 9 Curr, ‘Memoranda Concerning Our Family’ (1877), SLV, MS 8998. 10 The Times (London), 7 July 1851: 8. 76 5. Decline and Fall received no share of the pastoral properties left to his seven surviving brothers; this reflected the fact that his father had already gifted him a flock of sheep in partnership with his late brother William, with which they had established their own pastoral station at Corop. Shortly before Edward Curr senior died, however, he altered his will to direct that his eldest son should receive half of the share intended for his youngest son Montague, then 12 years old.11 Curr senior might have intended that this share be held in trust until Monty reached a more mature age, but whatever the case Edward M. Curr was able to fund extensive travel by selling some of his own sheep and leasing the Corop run for three years at £320 per annum.12 Curr arrived in London at the height of the ‘Great Exhibition’ in Hyde Park. It seems likely that he would have visited the Crystal Palace to marvel at the ‘Works of Industry of all Nations’, but his short family memoir makes no mention of such a visit, simply noting: ‘On arriving in London, I shook hands with my brothers and went to Cadiz, where I remained three months.’ Curr spent a further eight months in Seville, after which he had ‘learned to speak Spanish with tolerable facility’.13 Curr clearly hoped to satisfy his fascination for Spain and its history, which began during his schooling and continued through his ten years as a squatter. At Stonyhurst College Curr had developed a boyhood fascination for the First Carlist War in Spain, fought between liberal royalist forces representing the young Isabella II and politically conservative forces representing her uncle Carlos. Curr’s teenage sympathy for the Carlist cause, despite British support for Isabella, probably derived from his Catholic and Jesuit loyalties. In claiming the throne, Carlos enjoyed the support of conservative elements of the church, which opposed the general liberalisation of Spanish politics in the period. Moreover, the stronghold of the Carlist forces was the Basque provinces of northern Spain, where Jesuit founder Ignatius of Loyola was born. Support for the Carlists was thus quite understandable for a student of a Jesuit school, but as Curr later explained, his enthusiasm also derived from the exploits of a famous wartime hero: ‘I had myself been possessed by a strong desire to take service … under Zumalacarregui, the great Carlist general.’14 Curr’s interest in Spain survived beyond a boyish fascination in war and grew into a wide-ranging interest in the history and language of the country. It is significant that, despite having studied French and Italian ten years earlier, Curr chose to focus his new studies on the language and history of Spain. After almost a year’s study in Cádiz and Seville, Curr dispensed with his books and 11 Edward Curr’s Last Will and Testament, 14 April 1849, PROV, VPRS 7952/P1, Unit 3, Item A/375. 12 Curr 1883: 450; Curr, ‘Memoranda Concerning Our Family’ (1877), SLV, MS 8998. 13 Curr, ‘Memoranda Concerning Our Family’ (1877), SLV, MS 8998. 14 Curr 1883: 445. 77 Edward M . Curr and the Tide of History set out on a circumnavigation of the Mediterranean, which lasted approximately eight months, beginning and ending at Seville. This was Curr’s own middle- class version of the ‘Grand Tour’, which had been a popular rite of passage among young and wealthy Europeans since the seventeenth century. Although Curr took in much of the traditional route, his itinerary also had a decidedly Eastern flavour.

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